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Summary
Summary
This is a novel at once international and personal --and altogether riveting. Malachy Kitchen is an intelligence officer in Iraq. accused of cowardice, he becomes a recluse in a drug-infested housing project back home. But the mugging of an elderly widow
Author Notes
Gerald Seymour was born on November 25, 1941 in Guilford, Surrey, England. He received a BA Honors degree in Modern History from University College London. He was a broadcast journalist who covered many overseas conflicts including the Vietnam War, the Munich Olympics massacre, and Palestinian militant groups.
His first book, Harry's Game, was published in 1975 and soon afterwards, he retired from journalism to become a full-time author. Many of his other books were adapted into television movies and Field of Blood was adapted as the feature film, The Informant, starring Timothy Dalton.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Anglophiles with a taste for the dark side will enjoy the latest thriller from British author Seymour (The Unknown Soldier), despite an overly complicated plot involving drug trafficking and Mideast terrorism. Malachy Kitchen loses his job with British intelligence and is reduced to living on the street, abandoned by family and friends, after an apparent act of cowardice during the current Iraq war. Rescued by a stranger who judges him worthy of another chance, Kitchen moves to a drug-wrecked, gang-infested London housing project. After failing to prevent the mugging of an elderly neighbor, Kitchen employs his professional expertise against the local gangs. Meanwhile, a local drug lord is directed by his Hamburg supplier to do something that will carry him into far more shadowy realms than the drug trade. Unfortunately, since Kitchen comes across as such a pitiful figure for most of the book, readers will find it hard to like or identify with him until they gain a full understanding of his situation. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
An al-Qaeda mastermind slithers across Europe while a soldier rebuilds a ruined life in the London slums in the latest intricate thriller from Seymour (Traitor's Kiss, 2006), modern master of the genre. Malachy Kitchen has hit rock-bottom. Drummed from Her Majesty's army for apparent cowardice in Iraq, and abandoned by his wife, the former intelligence officer is homeless and aimless when he is scooped up by a social worker and dropped into one of the toughest housing projects in London with orders to get a life. His climb begins with a near tragedy. The old lady next door, a woman who has shown him a little kindness, is mugged and hospitalized, and her nephew, a tough cop, uses emotional blackmail to force Kitchen to do what the police cannot do, i.e., neutralize the thugs who victimized his aunt. And Kitchen does just that. Those thugs, worker bees in the local drug economy, are soon found hanging humiliatingly alive from the roof of the council tower. The cop then forces Kitchen to take out the goon who controlled the criminals. Then the job takes hold of Kitchen. He moves on voluntarily to the next level of revenge, and the next, until he is matched against Ricky Capel, the local capo whose drugs come through a connection with the Albanian mafia in Germany. It is that connection that will eventually put Kitchen on track to intercept a special package Ricky has been ordered to pick up from the storm-wracked coast of the Friesian islands. That package is a spectacularly lethal terrorist of great interest to a pair of British spies trying to recover their own careers. Complex, human, tense, engaged and--in all ways--wonderful. Nobody can touch Gerald Seymour. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In Malachy Kitchen, a disgraced intelligence officer, veteran thriller writer Seymour has created one of his most interesting and memorable characters. An accusation of cowardice in the field has sent Malachy on a downward spiral; now he's destitute, living in a hovel side by side with drug dealers and other down-and-outers. When an elderly woman, his only friend, is mugged, Malachy must drag himself out of his hole, reconnect with his past, and track down the drug-network chieftain responsible. Seymour gives us two stories to follow: Malachy's pursuit of drug lord Ricky Capel and the saga of his gradual personal redemption. The pursuit story is intricate and suspenseful, as Seymour's many fans have come to expect; in the redemption story, he nimbly avoids most of the cliches associated with the type (it's probably not possible to avoid them all). A thriller with a human side. --David Pitt Copyright 2006 Booklist
Library Journal Review
In Seymour's latest thriller, Malachy Kitchen, a British intelligence officer in Iraq, disgraces himself during a desert operation. Exiled to a London housing estate, Malachy gets a chance at redemption by standing up to the local drug dealers after an elderly neighbor is beaten by addicts. Ricky Capel, a particularly nasty drug lord, is trying to smuggle an Islamic insurgent leader into England. Malachy's efforts bring him to the attention of a team of spies pursuing the terrorist. As usual with Seymour, the plot weaves together several related stories involving many characters and locales. While Malachy is initially sympathetic, he eventually becomes lost in the writer's tangled moral morass. Crispin Redman provides a smooth narration and does well with West Indian, Scots, and Albanian accents. Recommended only for collections where Seymour is popular.-Michael Adams, CUNY Graduate Ctr. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.